Facebook Gets Massive Investment, Now Valued at $50 Billion

Facebook, the popular social networking site, has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor in a deal that values the company at $50 billion, according to people involved in the transaction...

...The new money will give Facebook more firepower to steal away valuable employees, develop new products and possibly pursue acquisitions — all without being a publicly traded company. The investment may also allow earlier shareholders, including Facebook employees, to cash out at least some of their stakes.

The new investment comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission has begun an inquiry into the increasingly hot private market for shares in Internet companies, including Facebook, Twitter, the gaming site Zynga and LinkedIn, an online professional networking site. Some experts suggest the inquiry is focused on whether certain companies are improperly using the private market to get around public disclosure requirements.

The deal could add pressure on Facebook to go public even as its executives have resisted.

"Next month, the twins and Mr. Narendra plan to ask a federal appeals court in San Francisco to undo the deal so they can pursue their original case against Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg, and win a richer payday. They could, though, lose it all. Still, they say it’s not about the money, it’s about the principle — and vindication."

Comments

Whenever Goldman Sachs is involved, it's timer to RUN not walk away from Facebook.

Posted by: Nanny McBone | Jan 3, 2011 10:46:57 AM

more than the winklevoss twins idea was stolen

the codes that Sanjay Mavinkurve and later Victor Gao were paid by the winklevoss twins to create for them were also stolen by zuckerberg and used to set up the facebook

Posted by: mstrozfckslv@yahoo.com | Jan 3, 2011 10:57:19 AM

Good luck to the twins, damn they are hot. Are they gay or straight?

Posted by: RONTEX | Jan 3, 2011 11:00:23 AM

rontex

they are straight as far as anyone knows

they are also exceptional = creating a few diff biz pre and post the facebook controversy and olympic medal winners

zuckerberg showed no exceptionalism in any part of his life pre nor after facebook

Posted by: mstrozfckslv@yahoo.com | Jan 3, 2011 11:02:38 AM

sorry wrong

they didnt win

they were in the olympics for rowing and lost

Posted by: mstrozfckslv@yahoo.com | Jan 3, 2011 11:04:57 AM

People are honestly insane to put up facebook and myspace pages in their names, with all kinds of stuff they wouldn't want an employer, etc.m to know. It even goes as far as posting comments using something like your real yahoo email account and not realizing it's possible others with your email can see everything you've posted if you haven't blocked access.

Zuckerberg is creep.

Posted by: ratbastard | Jan 3, 2011 2:30:42 PM

LOL @ mstrozfckslv: Gee, you sound awfully partisan. Have you missed the numerous profiles of Zuckerberg in the likes of Time Magazine and other sources that describe his various ventures, some of which large companies such as Microsoft tried to buy from him? What counts as "exceptional" in your book? (Whatever that word is supposed to mean, anyway!)

Posted by: redball | Jan 3, 2011 3:15:46 PM

those two twins are snotty little boys. they were actually portrayed as more likeable in the movie then they actually are in real life. talk about entitlement ....whiners

Posted by: jj | Jan 3, 2011 4:04:50 PM

lol ratbastard

If you think my real name ,address, etc is attached to this yahoo e-mail then your beyond naive

Posted by: mstrozfckslv@yahoo.com | Jan 3, 2011 8:13:00 PM

PS

in fact ratbastard i forgot i made the email up, it doesn't exist or at least I never created it (might be someone's in the world)

Andy's sight asks for an e-mail to post. I put up some made up thing one day and have gone with it

:-P

Posted by: mstrozfckslv@yahoo.com | Jan 3, 2011 8:16:07 PM

@ MSTROZFCKSLV,

...Well yeah, I don't think you fully appreciate my previous post, or you're being disingenuous. My post refers to specific cases of people who do use their real email when posting on , for example, yahoo, etc., And also people's facebook and other social networking sites. People can be pretty careless, and yes, even naive.

...I'm aware of multiple email accounts, disposable email, etc., boss. And my real name isn't ratbastard, and I use a specific email account for this site. What's your point, boss?

Posted by: ratbastard | Jan 3, 2011 9:48:52 PM

Didn't the US taxpayers recently bail out Goldman Sachs? Did they pay any of it back?